Local News

A crowd braved the cold Thursday evening to hear school board candidates and those running for UNM-LA's advisory board present backgrounds and ideas for advancing local education.

District 2 school board candidate Melanie McKinley is a chemical engineer and stay at home mom whose children are 6, 8, 10 and 12 years of age. "When I finish my first term, I will have two high schoolers, a middle schooler and one child in elementary school," she said.

The county council saw a changing of the guard Tuesday night as councilors elect Vincent Chiravalle, Sharon Stover and Mike Wismer took the reins from Frances Berting, Jim Hall and Ken Milder.

A new chairman and vice chairman were also elected.

Councilor Michael Wheeler was elected as chairman, while Mike Wismer was elected as vice chair. Wheeler and Wismer were both voted in unanimously.

They were also the only nominees for the seats.

How much snowfall does Los Alamos collect each year? Three feet? Four feet?

It may surprise you to learn that we get five feet – 58.7 inches to be exact – on average.

Five feet per year, on average, measured from 1971 through 2000, for the year.

This December brought 29 inches of snowfall to Los Alamos, which is half the average for the entire season already!

Expect the other half to be spread out over the remainder of the winter, given the return of mild La Niña conditions which bodes for warmer and dryer months ahead.

North Wind, Inc. has grown from a single employee to a staff of 35 in Los Alamos since 2005.

The once solitary figure who was there at the beginning and who was recently named a senior vice president of the company is Pete Maggiore, former New Mexico environmental secretary under Gov. Gary Johnson.

“I worked out of the house,” he said of the company’s early days in Los Alamos. “We’ve grown steadily since then.”